Education Bill

My Lords, in Committee, while I think that there was a general acceptance of the idea of focusing inspection more intelligently, a number of concerns were raised about some of the specific provisions in Clause 39. I said that I would reflect on these and report back. In my letter of 14 October to the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, I set out our policy intention and the changes that Ofsted will make to strengthen the arrangements in response to particular concerns that were raised. The principle of proportionality is already a feature of the current inspection system with more frequent inspections for satisfactory and inadequate schools, and intervals of up to five years for good and outstanding schools. The intention behind Clause 39 is to take this to the next logical step by replacing the requirement for all schools to receive a routine inspection with an approach based on rigorous risk assessment that triggers inspection of outstanding primary and secondary schools where necessary. Clause 41 seeks to apply a similar approach for the inspection of outstanding FE providers. In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, raised a particular concern that regulations made under the new powers introduced at Clause 39 could extend the categories of schools not requiring routine inspection to cover, for example, all academies or all faith schools without appropriate scrutiny. While we have been very clear about our intentions to use the new power to exempt only outstanding schools, I accept the general point made by the noble Lord, which is why I have tabled Amendments 74 and 75. They provide that any subsequent changes to the first set of regulations made under the new power—a draft of which was shared with the House as indicative regulations in March, exempting outstanding mainstream primary and secondary schools—will require parliamentary approval through the affirmative procedure. Amendments 81 and 82 offer the same commitment in relation to FE providers. I hope that these amendments remove any doubt about the Government’s intentions and any concern about a hidden agenda, and provide sensible and effective safeguards. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, was also worried about the performance of some outstanding schools dropping and I understand that concern too. Our response to that point has not been to move away from the principle of greater proportionality but to look again at the question of risk assessment and the triggers that would cause an inspection to take place. Risk assessment already takes account of a range of information, including pupil attainment and progress, attendance, evidence of poor performance gathered through survey visits, warning notices issued by local authorities, views from parents, including through Ofsted’s recently launched parent view online questionnaire, and any complaints. An inspection may occur where, for example, achievement was judged to be less than outstanding and has not improved; where particular groups of pupils are not making good progress; where attendance is significantly below average and not improving; or where Ofsted undertakes a survey visit and identifies concerns. A decision to inspect will also take account of the views of parents, local authorities, funding agencies and others in the local area. Inspection of outstanding schools based on risk assessment has in effect been trialled in the past academic year using flexibility on the timing of inspections that exist within the current arrangements. Ofsted has been visiting only those schools that had been identified as showing signs of potential decline through Ofsted’s risk assessment process. The national data for outstanding schools show that around a third drop their inspection grade on re-inspection, a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath. But with the 72 schools that Ofsted targeted through risk assessment, two thirds have declined, including 11 that have dropped to ““satisfactory”” and three that were ““inadequate””. This shows that Ofsted’s approach does effectively identify schools that have slipped back and all those schools have now gone back into the pool for routine inspection. Those 72 schools represent around 2 per cent of all outstanding schools but to provide additional assurance that Ofsted’s risk assessment will be sufficiently widely drawn, we have agreed with Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector that the risk assessment threshold should be such that it identifies at least 5 per cent of outstanding schools and outstanding further education providers for re-inspection every year. I hope that this provides noble Lords with some reassurance. In addition, we have also reflected on concerns expressed in Committee about the possible detrimental effect of a change of head teacher. Both we and Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector accept that this is a risk factor. We all know how central a head’s role is in the ethos and achievement of a school. So we have agreed that while annual risk assessments will normally start three years after the previous inspection, this will be brought forward where there is a change of head teacher. Building on this, Ofsted will trial a new approach whereby HMI will engage directly with the new head teacher to discuss the school’s performance and improvement priorities, which is a move that a number of noble Lords will welcome. HMI will also consider the progress of outstanding schools at its regular meetings with local authority directors of children’s services. I have also agreed that for outstanding FE providers with leadership changes this matter will be discussed at regular meetings between Ofsted and the funding agencies. Ofsted has powers to investigate complaints from parents and will continue to use these as a mechanism for determining whether and when to inspect a school. This will play an even more important part in intelligence-gathering in future. Last week Ofsted launched a new system to gather parents’ views more generally and outside inspection. Parent View enables parents to register views about their child’s school at any time using an online questionnaire. Results will be published and the information will act as an additional source of intelligence for Ofsted when it undertakes risk assessments of individual schools. The Education Select Committee report published earlier in the year emphasised the importance of using Ofsted surveys to look at excellent practice and spread that through the system. To ensure that we are able to capture best practice, Ofsted will continue to visit outstanding schools and further education providers for those surveys. It is likely that the vast majority of outstanding secondary schools will experience such visits within a five-year period and around a quarter of primary schools will also be visited. As I mentioned before, these visits will also inform Ofsted’s risk assessment. Clauses 39 and 41 build greater proportionality into the inspection arrangements in line with our determination that in future inspection should be targeted where it is needed most and where it will have the greatest impact on provision and standards, but Ofsted will take a cautious approach in relation to risk assessment. The new commitment to inspect more than double the proportion of schools that were identified through risk assessment last year reinforces this. In the interests of the many successful schools and further education providers that are doing well, I ask noble Lords to accept the government amendments which provide additional assurance about the scope of these measures. I beg to move.